


i don’t deserve it

by bexgempisces



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Basically everyone appears at some point, Bus Kids - Freeform, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Child Abuse, Skye | Daisy Johnson Needs a Hug, Team as Family, Torture, Ward isnt really in this, but for real there’s a lot of eating disorder stuff in this you have been warned, cos I despise him, daisy had a shitty childhood, it comes up later, it’s not a lot don’t stress too much I’m not evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26696410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bexgempisces/pseuds/bexgempisces
Summary: “How long have you had anorexia, Skye?” Simmons voice is crisp and simple, this is a demand not a question. She must answer honestly, if she has any hope of sticking around.“Since I was ten.”—Skye/Daisy has anorexia and this is a fic on how they deal with it in certain points of the seasons.That’s a shitty description I swear it makes more sense when you read it.
Relationships: Skye | Daisy Johnson & Agents of SHIELD Team
Comments: 16
Kudos: 134





	1. You Just Need Some Help

**Author's Note:**

> Hey yall, how are we doing? I hope yall are well. 
> 
> So, I decided to write a fic about Daisy having anorexia because of stuff in her childhood. It’ll go through certain point in the seasons and how her eating disorder manifests there and how the team deal with it. 
> 
> There is actually a lot of cute fluffy team family moments in this, which is surprising for me, but there’s also a lot of stuff that could trigger people with eating disorders so please read at you’re own discretion. 
> 
> WARNINGS: anorexia, it’s everywhere in this fic and it’s delved into quite a lot. Please be careful when reading.  
> Past child abuse, Daisy was in a lot of abusive foster homes as a kid and I go into it in places in this fic  
> Grief/mourning, I will be looking into Lincoln’s death and Trips and probably Coulson’s, and how that affected Daisy  
> Torture, it’s not till a lot later but I’ve got stuff planned for post 5x14, post 7x06 and I wanted to write some watchdog stuff and maybe go into her torture in the Framework because why tf was that never addressed 
> 
> I think that’s it but let me if I missed any! 
> 
> First chapter is season 1, set sometime after The Magical Place. 
> 
> I hope yall enjoy this fic, or maybe not idk, but as always any and all comments and criticisms are appreciated so lemme know what you think! 
> 
> Thanks and enjoy, bex xx

“Skye? You have to eat.” Ward complained to Skye at breakfast one morning. 

She tensed up, Ward’s tone was too familiar, too like her foster brothers and fathers who said the exact same thing, just with a different name. Mary Sue couldn’t eat her meals either. 

It wasn’t like she could help it exactly, it started at her fifth foster home, where they restricted meal privileges unless you could pay in chores or money or something. Being nine years old, Mary Sue couldn’t make money and there was only so many chores you could do when there was six of you in one house, so she didn’t eat a lot. In her mind, she saw it that she didn’t  _ deserve _ to eat, she hadn’t earned it. It must be her fault for her empty stomach and clothes that hung more than they used to on her thin limbs. 

She was with that family for six months and that way of thinking stuck. Even in houses where food wasn’t restricted, she struggled to eat, worried about what it would cost her. 

Food was a problem in a lot of her foster families anyway. They either restricted it, gave too much too willingly that it freaked her out or punished her for taking it when she did work up the courage and strength to take it. Food became a prize, compete with punishments and terms and conditions. In some of the worse houses it meant belt buckles and days on end spent in tiny closets in the dark, in better houses it meant empty platitudes and concerned looks that made her bristle when she struggled to eat the bare minimum calories for her age.

The nuns tried to fix it before they sent her to another foster house. Skye knows that that caused her eating disorder too. Every time she went back, she was sent with notes from the families that she was ungrateful and disruptive when it came to meal time, and that never ended well for her in the orphanage. Sister Bernadette and Sister Travis always had it in for her whenever she came back. They’d send her to confessional, restrict her time spent with the other kids, rap her knuckles or spank her with the hairbrush, screaming bible verses and prayers at her until she fell crying to the floor. It never worked, the little voice in her head screamed louder and louder that she didn’t deserve the food any time she came into contact with food and she was down to eating the bare essentials to survive. 

It prepared her for living on the streets at least, when she ran away at sixteen. It was her twenty fifth foster home and the tenth one where her foster brother had taken too much of a liking to her. Jonathan was eighteen and thought that her pretty face meant he didn’t need permission to slide into her bed at night, hand over her mouth and take what was left of her innocence. 

She left the next day. 

On the streets, it was take what you could get when you could get it, but that was a whole lot harder with anorexia. She was already used to the empty pit in her stomach and the constant coldness that she didn’t really feel them anymore. Her van at least provided warmth and with her hacking skills she could afford food but what was the point when she couldn’t eat it anyway? She’d earned it, but the voice in her head kept screaming no. Hacking the Pentagon or the FBI or even Stark Industries that one time on a drunken bet did not count as “earning” her right to food. She’d lost that a long time ago when she was dumped on a doorstep of some evil nuns because her parents didn’t want her. 

Skye is pretty sure that’s why she’s so desperate to find them. She can finally know why they gave her up, why she wasn’t enough, why every family sent her back. It’s why she hacks SHIELD, the last agency that could have information on her, and she finds a redacted document. She actually lets herself eat a full meal that night, because at least she found something. 

(She puked it up again later that night and Miles said that she might need proper help, but she counts it as an achievement.) 

It’s been easier to hide her anorexia on the Bus because no one was really paying attention to your eating as long as you didn’t pass out on missions and kept your fitness up. If anyone saw her crash then she’d blame it on long nights coding and they stopped asking for a while after the whole Miles incident, so it got a lot easier to hide. 

But now Ward was telling her in the same way all those parents and nuns and priests had that she  _ had  _ to eat. The alarm bells are flashing bright red in her head and she knows this is Ward, he wouldn’t hurt her, she won’t be punished for not eating her meals anymore, but she can’t help it. 

“I just don’t like breakfast, okay Ward?” She eventually stuttered out but her tone sounded angry. She hadn’t meant it to, but his eyes were already narrowing and it’s the same look Mr Grives gave her before the belt came off and her back was mincemeat again. 

She unconsciously takes a few steps back and her hands are already coming over her head. It’s a natural reflex, she doesn’t mean to do it, making yourself small was the only way to survive in that world. But Ward isn’t advancing and he looks confused and scared and suddenly the whole team is there and she can’t control her breathing anymore. 

She barely registers the figure in front of her, her head is too full of big men with the lightning belts across her back and their words in her ears like poison mixing with the prayers that the devil that made her stop eating would get out of her head. The little voice in her head is still screaming at her for the cereal she ate last night for dinner because cereal was normally a safe enough food, but not today apparently. She can’t hear or see anything but shapes and the voices in her head and she’s so goddamn afraid because they weren’t supposed to see this. 

“Skye. It’s Jemma, you need to listen to my voice okay? You’re having a panic attack and I need you to take some deep breaths okay?” Jemma...she knew a Jemma. Jemma Simmons, English biochemist with an obsession for Doctor Who and autopsies. One of her closest friends. Best friend to Fitz, but they really had to do something about their bloody unresolved sexual tension, it was driving the rest of them nuts. 

“Skye, focus on me, okay? I’m going to count to seven and every number take a deep breath okay?” The figure that is probably Simmons says. 

Seven breaths, she can do that. Her lungs are on fire and she feels like she’s about to pass out any minute but Jemma counts to seven and she’s taken seven breaths, then fourteen, then twenty one and by twenty eight, she’s breathing normally again. The fog has cleared, she’s on the Bus, not in that house in Philadelphia and it’s Ward, not a foster father. 

She passes out then. 

* * *

“How long have you had anorexia, Skye?” Simmons voice is crisp and simple, this is a demand not a question. She must answer honestly, if she has any hope of sticking around. 

“Since I was ten.” She answers and she reads the shock on Jemma’s face though it is quickly masked. She’s seen that look a lot in her life, foster mothers who pretended to care for about a week before realising she was broken, guidance counsellors when her English was at a F but her Math was an A+, hackers in the Rising Tide who couldn’t believe a girl from the street could be better than them. She’s seen it all her life. 

“And you never got help for it?” Simmons asks eventually, scribbling stuff down on her little pad. Shit, this never ended well and she was so goddamn close to becoming an agent and finding the truth about her family. 

“I grew up in the system then I was on the streets, healthcare is hard to come by. Can I go now?” Skye explained simply, hoping Simmons would leave it there and let her go back to her bunk. She was fine, panic attacks just took a lot out of her and there wasn’t a lot to begin with. She just needed some caffeine or something and she’d be good to go. 

“Skye you know this isn’t healthy and it could be dangerous on missions. You need to get help or it could stop you from becoming an agent. I can give you a meal plan and we can work some stuff out, but you have to tell me about your eating disorder.” 

That was always the hard bit. Getting into her anorexia always required delving into her past and there was reasons she kept it buried. Hell, she refused to go medical when she needed it, they’d see the scars and she couldn’t deal with the pity stares. She’s been to more psychs than anyone she knows and they couldn’t help her either. It was just her issue and she dealt with it when it came. 

But she didn’t want to do anything to hinder her chance at becoming a SHIELD agent. She had to find out the truth about her redacted document if she had any chance of finding her parents. 

“Food isn’t always easy to come by in foster homes and a lot of foster parents restrict it. I don’t think I deserve food because I haven’t done anything to earn it. I’m not stupid I know it’s bad for me but I don’t know how to break the cycle.” Skye eventually explains and she waits for the look of pity or Simmons face but there isn’t any. Instead there is  _understanding_.

“I’m sorry, Skye. You shouldn’t have to live with that. But we can help you.” Simmons says, which takes Skye off guard. That normally doesn’t end well, it usually leads to shrinks and meds and prayers, but she has a feeling that the team can actually help this time.

“I’d like that.” She whispers and Jemma draws her in for a tight hug. 

It’ll probably take a long time, her issue are deeply embedded in her brain and she can’t just turn them off. But maybe, just this once, she found people who can help. 

She’s going to be okay, she just needs some help first.


	2. You Have People Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is post season 1, like a week or so after the finale and it’s the first training session between May and Skye, with some MamaMay because I love writing shit like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey yall! I’m really happy people are liking this because I was stressed as hell that it wouldn’t be received very well. 
> 
> I’m basing a lot of Skye/Daisy’s anorexia and mental health issues on my own so a lot of the stuff mentioned might not work for everyone, it’s just how it works for me. 
> 
> I did decide to make her a lot younger than she is in canon and there was literally no reason for it, I just wanted a more teenage Skye, so right now she’s 19 and born in 1994. 
> 
> WARNINGS: anorexia, past child abuse
> 
> Please enjoy! -bex xx
> 
> P.s- I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to update this I’ll try to have regular updates but I’m also dealing with exams and stuff, so I’ll try my best.

“Training starts at 5.” May told her just before she went to bed. They’d been at the Playground for over a week and so far it’s been a lot of checking the files that Romanoff released and seeing what had to be encrypted for their safety and improving their current networks and firewalls. 

Skye is taken off guard, she’d forgotten May had taken over as her SO, considering her old one is currently in their basement. Her skin sets alight when she remembers that,  _ his _ hands on her body,  _ his _ voice dripping lies into her head and she’d believed him,  _ fell for him _ , and it was all an act. 

She calms her breathing before she has another panic attack and nods at May, before she turns to leave. She heads to the showers before she goes to bed and spends three hours trying to scrub him off her skin. 

* * *

Turns out that waking up at five in the morning is a lot harder than she expected it to be. Her alarm goes off and she nearly throws it against the wall, before blearily changing into gym clothes and brushing her teeth. Her arms are rubbed raw from last nights attempt to rid herself of Ward but at least she can’t feel him on her skin anymore. 

“We’re going to start with a run around the hangar and tai chi, then we’re eating breakfast.” Shit. Skye hadn’t realised that she’d have to eat her meals with May, she normally eats with Fitzsimmons or Coulson. 

She probably won’t be eating with any of them for a while. 

Her eating had gotten a lot better for the first time in nine years. As long as she ate with someone else, was given strict instructions on what to eat and when to eat it and avoided big portions and foods high in calories, she was fine. She finally felt in control of her body and she was a lot happier because of it. 

Finding out the truth about her past probably helped too, no matter how dark and twisted it was. She had been wanted, the people that brought her into this world had loved her and she was ripped away from them. It’s why she fights so hard with SHIELD, they protected her from that world, although they threw her into an almost darker one, but she can’t let it happen to someone else. 

And then she got shot and that all went to hell.

Her pain meds made her ravenous and she’d idly thought that whatever alien voodoo serum they’d used to bring her back had miraculously cured her anorexia for all of two days before food tasted like glass and she was back to square one. 

She’s just been avoiding it mostly since then, fighting to keep the bare minimum down because she had to get back in her feet after her injury. Every mouthful made her want to vomit, and she often did, but she had to get better. 

She’s succeeded so far in this tactic because everyone was so stressed about something else that they didn’t notice she hadn’t eaten anything apart from “safe foods” like yoghurt and cereal and orange slices since Lorelai appeared and their world went to shit. 

The voice in her head is back with a vengeance. She trusted Ward and now Fitz had brain damage and Simmons was falling apart and she hasn’t seen Coulson since last Thursday. She brought this on herself, going into that basement in Italy and getting herself shot and giving Garrett exactly what he wanted. It’s all just circulating round and round her head on a loop and she’s not Skye, but Mary Sue Poots and she trusted her eleventh foster home to be different, but she ended up with a broken arm and spent four days in their basement. 

This all circulates her head as her and May run laps around the hangar. Her feet pound the ground like they did when she was five, nine, twelve, fourteen, sixteen, the concrete under feet provided the beat in her head of a song that tells her she is not enough, will  _ never  _ be enough. It’s not the hangar it’s the church, Father Raphael is angry because she ran away and Mother Superior is seething because she got sent back by a famous politician. 

“Skye!” A voice cuts through the voices. She knows that voice, it’s not a nun or one of the priests or a foster home or the little voice in her head. It’s May. Her new SO. 

She stops running and nearly falls as her vision turns spotty and the world tilts. Note to self, never go sprinting on a near empty stomach. Good one Skye, she thinks as she upchucks whatever tiny amount of food was in her stomach into the nearest trash can. 

When she finally stops vomiting and finds the strength to face May, she doesn’t see what she was expecting to. She was expecting disgust, anger, disappointment, all the things she’s used to seeing. She doesn’t see that, she sees understanding and guilt and something that looks strangely like  _pride_.

“You made six miles by the time I stopped you. Maria only made three when she vomited.” May says and it’s so far from what Skye was expecting that she reels back a little.

“As in, Maria Hill? Co-Director of SHIELD Maria Hill?” She asks incredulously. Was May seriously comparing her to one of the fricking heads of SHIELD? 

“Yes. Morse made ten but she’d been training her whole life. You did good, Skye, especially since you haven’t eaten a proper meal in a month.” May fixes her with a piercing glare. Someone had been paying attention then. 

“I’ve just not been very hungry lately, it’s fine.” Skye deflects, raising her shaking arms to fix her ponytail, trying not to notice that her elbows jutted out unnaturally and her wrists would probably snap with the tiniest amount of pressure applied. She twists the fallen strands back into her hair tie and unconsciously begins to braid a small section of hair from her ponytail. It’s an old habit, she replaced biting her nails with this because the nuns would always rap her knuckles or coat her nails in a gel that tasted like tar to stop her from biting them. 

“That’s not going to fly with me, Skye. Part of your training is looking after yourself and that includes getting a handle on your anorexia. You’ll eat with me or Trip from now on, okay?” It’s not a request, it’s a rule but it’s one Skye is strangely grateful for. No one in her life ever cared enough to help like this. 

“As long as I’m not eating with Ward, I’m happy.” Skye mumbles, trying to hide the truth of her fear from the statement, but her voice shakes and her fingers twist the braid a little tighter.

“You never have to talk to him again if you don’t want to Skye.” May promises but Skye had seen the footage from his cell, she knows he will only talk to her. That knowledge makes her want to punch something, preferably his face. But that would require getting close to him and she swore she would never do that. 

“I promised myself I wouldn’t let myself get hurt like that again and he did it anyway. I should have known better.” Skye whispers but it is more to herself than May. 

“Skye, it is not your fault that he turned out to be a HYDRA traitor, he convinced all of us and we have been at this a lot longer than you. You’re what? Twenty four? Me and Coulson have been in this business a lot than you and we didn’t see it. It is not your fault Skye.” 

“Nineteen.” Skye mumbles dejectedly, May already knew about her anorexia and her past, she might as well know her real age. “I’m nineteen.” 

“You said you were twenty three. Your file says 1989.” May says and Skye can read the shock on the woman’s face, something she hadn’t even known was possible. 

“I’m a hacker, of course I changed my birthday. You never would have let me stay on the Bus if you thought I was just some dumb kid.” Skye explains. It was one of the first things she taught herself to do, foster home number thirteen, kids paid a lot for good fake IDs. It’s how she bought her van when she eventually ran away. “You’re not going to make me leave are you?” 

“What? No, of course not, Skye. You’re one of us. But I will be telling Coulson. Now, let’s go do tai chi, then we can have some breakfast. And yes, you will be eating all of it.” May warns but a happy feeling has settled in Skye’s chest. She feels a lot lighter now that she’s not holding onto as much and she has a newfound trust and respect for May. It hits her that she can trust this woman with her life, it’s the first person she’s trusted unrelentingly since she was five. That means a lot to her. 

And as the months pass, she becomes a better agent and a skilled fighter. She eats breakfast and lunch with May and usually Fitz, whose hands shake almost as much as hers when holding a spoon full of oatmeal, though for very different reasons, and she eats dinner with Trip who she has found to be one of her new best friends, she feels an overwhelming sense of belonging. This feels  _right_ , like _home_. She goes to bed tired but it’s because May kicked her ass on the mats, not because her stomach was screaming for nourishment. She still has bad days obviously, the little anorexic voice in her head will roar to life every now and then, but on those days she’ll play video games with Trip or watch a movie with Fitz or spar with May and it won’t feel like the world is crashing down on her. 


	3. Don’t Stress, Kiddo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post s2, Daisy is not dealing well with the death of Trip and her mom, or with the disappearance of Jemma and Mays absence. Fortunately, big sibs Mack and Bobbi are there to help her out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so this one is based a lot on personal experience, like I said, it might not work for everyone but I do encourage you to reach out and get help if you need it. Stay safe out there, dudes it’s a crazy world we’re living in right now. 
> 
> Also we get Mack and Bobbi fluff in this one and them being the absolute best big siblings to Daisy, and as this is post season 2 her name has officially changed. Technically she’s 20 now, but her age isn’t mentioned at all in this chapter, also just assume that everyone else is the same kinda age as they are in canon. 
> 
> I hope yall enjoy this chapter and as always pls be careful:   
> WARNINGS: anorexia, past child abuse, death, loss 
> 
> Enjoy! -bex xx

Daisy’s life has gone to complete shit a lot of times before. She’s pretty sure this is the worst. 

She is once again an orphan, found and lost her parents in a matter of  _three weeks_. She’s lost two of her best friends and to top it all off, May’s on vacation and it’s looking more and more likely that she won’t be returning. 

And it’s all her fault. She knows it’s her fault like she knows the sky is blue and the world is round. She knows it like she knows how to assemble a sniper rifle and how to kill a man in five different ways. She knows it like she knows the caloric value of a Red Bull and that her favourite colour is purple.

Her nightmares have nightmares now, the deafening _crack_ of her mothers spine haunts her dreams like a ghost and Trip disintegrates in a temple every time she hears that crystal shatter and she can still see the footage of Jemma being swallowed by that goddamn rock. She keeps waking up and her bed is shaking or something has fallen off the dresser and now her arms have bruises and she is running out of bandages. 

And if all that wasn’t bad enough, her anorexia is at a new low. It’s Wednesday and she hasn’t eaten anything except apple slices and Monster Mango Loco since last Friday. She’s tried, god has she tried, but every glance at food reminds her of who she should be eating with. The people who told her to eat at least half of her sandwich or that three bites of pasta should not take an hour to eat, are gone. The fragments of Trip’s face flashes every time she even walks into the kitchen and she remembers all over again that he is dead and  _ it is her fault . _

She’s learned that beating up a punching bag is a very good way to deal with that little voice in her head screaming that she did not deserve those stupid apple slices. Her fists mechanically pummel the leather and it’s almost soothing in the way it feels like a punishment. Her knuckles are bleeding and that is a good thing, she is deserving of this pain. Trip and her mother and Raina and a whole lot of other people are dead because of her and she deserves this. 

“It’s not going to hit back.” A voice behind startles her and she nearly quakes them before she realises it’s just Bobbi. They’re on very precarious foundations after the whole “Real SHIELD” thing but Bobbi is a nice enough person and she took an absolute beating from Ward so she’s letting bygones be bygones. 

“I know. Just wanted to get some aggression out.” She defends and Bobbi’s eyes narrow in that way that tells Daisy she knows she’s talking absolute shit. This isn’t anger, this is punishment. 

“I know we aren’t exactly the best of friends but Coulson said he was worried about you. Figured you might want someone to talk to and my schedule is pretty clear.” Bobbi tells her which just makes her feel worse. The last thing Coulson needed was to be worried about her,  _ she’s fine _ , she didn’t need a babysitter. 

“Thanks, but I’m good.” Daisy says and she intends to leave but Bobbi grabs her arm with a surprising amount of strength and it burns because her arms are bruised from last night’s rendezvous with her mother on the Iliad. 

“I know you haven’t eaten since last week and that you’re hiding those bruises from everyone. I know you think that everything is your fault and that’s why you’re actually hammering that bag. I know you’re anorexic, Daisy and I know it’s kicking your ass right now.” 

It catches her so off guard that she stumbles back a few steps and lands with a heavy thump on the mats. Her eyes fill with tears and soon she’s sobbing on the floor and trying to stop the room from shaking. Control still gets away from her sometimes when she’s particularly upset and Bobbi just flung everything she’s been trying to avoid at her. She feels simultaneously embarrassed and weightless as the breakdown she’s been storing for the past month or so finally hits and she just keeps crying into her knees. 

It takes her a long time to register Bobbi’s hand rubbing circles into her back but when she does, she rotates her body and curls further into Bobbi’s front, letting herself be weak for once. Bobbi just tightens her hold on her and let’s her cry it out, whispering soft assurances that she was okay and it wasn’t her fault, which balances the screams in her head of Trip and her mom and Jemma and all the foster parents that said that it was. She just cries and everything feels like it’s underwater but it’s clean and it’s calm and she feels like she could float forever. 

She doesn’t of course, eventually she stops crying and sits up a little straighter. 

“Don’t you even think about apologising for that. Even SHIELD agents need to have a good cry sometimes.” Bobbi warned, but her tone was gentle and it spoke volumes to Daisy. She was so used to crying in silence, she’d been doing that ever since foster home number four, Mr Thomas belted her when she cried one day, that someone telling her it was okay was an unfamiliar yet dearly wanted concept. 

“I was just going to apologise for the snot on your shirt.” Daisy said, letting a smile pass on her tear stained face. 

“I have plenty of other shirts.” Bobbi laughed, before she carefully rose without disturbing her knee. “Come on.” 

“Where are we going?” Daisy asked curiously. 

“Mack’s making chilli. And I thought that we could help you out with your problems with food, Fitz let me read Jemma’s file on your anorexia. It won’t be the same, but it might help?” Bobbi explained, taking care to tread carefully around the subject. 

“You don’t have to do that.” Daisy mumbled, feeling an overwhelming sense of gratitude and self loathing. She had super powers for God’s sake, she shouldn’t need help with something so simple as eating. 

“You know, you should really stop listening to that little voice in your head. It’s a dirty liar.” Bobbi says which makes Daisy stop dead in her tracks. 

“You...you know about that?” 

“Yep, and I’m telling you that it’s beatable. You just need a little bit of help first, Rockstar.” Bobbi says, knowingly and if Daisy wasn’t a tad emotionally drained, she would probably have started crying again. 

“And you and...and Mack. You want to help?” Her voice is small and scared, but she is so used to being rejected that it is natural at this point and she’s so tired that she doesn’t really care. 

“You got it, kiddo. Look, Daisy, I know it’s hard to trust us because of everything that’s happened, but you deserve good things in life. Especially right now. We just want to help you, okay?” Bobbi reassures her and that’s when Daisy wraps her arms around Bobbi and tries to project all her gratitude and trust and acceptance into that hug. It is a strange thing for her, she’s grown up with older kids who pushed her down and took her new sneakers and blamed her for the broken window even though she was in the other room, but Bobbi and Mack were offering to help her eating disorder because everyone else had left or died or couldn’t be bothered anymore. The overwhelming gratitude is overpowering the self loathing and she’s feel a lot brighter than she has since the Iliad. 

“Is there any chance I could have something else than chilli? I’m allergic to kidney beans.” Daisy mumbled into Bobbi’s chest and smiles a little at the way Bobbi chuckles. 

“Aw man, I was really looking forward to your reaction to my famous chilli, Tremors.” Mack said from behind them and Daisy disconnects herself from Bobbi to look at him. 

“Guess you’ll just have to try something else.” Bobbi laughed. 

“Cool, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of opportunities considering we’ve got that team to assemble. Partners, right?” 

“Partners.” Daisy concluded, throwing a fist bump his way. “Do you wanna go a round of COD? I’m told I’m unbeatable.” 

“Food first, games later.” Bobbi warned, gently steering her into the kitchen and poking her in the back with a long finger. “What do you want?” 

But posed with this much choice in food still stresses her out. It was part of the agreement that she didn’t choose or she’d just go back to her “safe foods” which she was only supposed to have when she was really,  _ really  _ bad and though this probably constituted as that, she at least wanted to try. 

“Relax, Tremors, I’ll make you some mac and cheese.” Mack laughs and she grins at him, wondering how he could read her so easily already. She sat at the counter and tried not to think about the fact that Trip’s seat was empty and Jemma wasn’t making tea and just let the world fall into background noise around her. 

Mack and Bobbi slid in beside her and Hunter and Coulson and even Fitz made an appearance in the hour and a half it took for her to eat her bowl of pasta. 

The time limit on her eating would come later she knew, but for now she relished in having her first full meal in over a month as she destroyed Mack in COD. 


	4. Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post season 3 finale, pre Daisy leaving SHIELD. She is not dealing well with Lincoln’s death and the aftermath of HIVE.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A rather dark chapter ngl, Daisy’s in a really bad place by and I’m really hoping it’s in character, 
> 
> Also I just realised upon writing this note that cos I deaged her slightly, she’s like 21 or 22 and dealing with this. I hated that we never saw the immediate aftermath or what led to her leaving so I tried to put it here, pls enjoy. 
> 
> WARNINGS: anorexia, past child abuse, depression, anxiety attacks post nightmares, self harm, suicidal thoughts or intentions
> 
> Thanks for reading and I hope yall enjoy -bex xx

_ “Daisy! Mack brought in pizza, I saved your favourite.” Lincoln tells her, slipping an arm around her waist.  _

_ “You know me so well.” She laughs, a warm feeling filling her chest. He pulls her tight and she inhales the sweet scent of his shampoo.  _

_ “I wish you didn’t have to leave.” She mumbles into his shoulder, letting her senses memorise his scent, his shape, his very being before he left again.  _

_ “I wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t killed me.” He says, turning to face her and his face is swollen and frozen, eyes hollow and black blood dripping from his mouth.  _

_“I’m sorry, Lincoln. Please, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” she sobs into his rotting chest and he doesn’t smell like cherry anymore, he smells of death and blood and the emptiness of_ space. 

_ “Not sorry enough.” He says and he pushes her away to the other side of the room where the dust starts swirling around and around her head again.  _

_ “No! No, please! I’m sorry! Not again, no please, not again!” She begs but it falls on deaf ears and HIVE is in front of her and he smiles that awful grin that told her she had no choice.  _

_ “Are you ready to comply?” _

* * *

She wakes up screaming, coughing on nightmare dust of a monster and sweating. 

“Daisy, shh, you’re okay, it wasn’t real.” May tries to console her but she’s too panic-ridden and May is too close, she could hurt her. 

“Get away from me!” She manages to shout and curls into a protective ball in the corner of the bed, hands pressed over her ears because  _ he’s  _ back and she won’t do it again, no she can’t hurt them again, please- 

“Skye!” The name is so unexpected that she snaps out of it. No one has called her Skye in months since she changed it. May stands at the edge of her bed, scared and shocked at her behaviour. 

“I’m sorry.” Daisy whispers, although she’s not entirely sure what for, probably everything.

“Can I come up there?” May asks her and Daisy nods. May slides in beside her as the tears start again and Daisy sobs. The bed trembles beneath her but she really couldn’t care less. 

Lincoln is dead and she killed him. Andrew is dead and she killed him. Countless agents are dead and she killed them. She killed all of them and it’s all too much. Her hands are soaked in blood and she doesn’t know how to wash it off. 

“Shh, Daisy, you’re okay. It’ll get better, you’re okay.” May whispers to her, her hand rubbing circles on her back that Daisy does not deserve, she  _ killed  _ them, she is a  _monster_. Why can’t they see that? 

* * *

She doesn’t get better, if anything, she gets worse. It’s like he drained all the light from her life when he died and now she is trapped in darkness, fighting a monster she can’t see.

They bring her food and love and she doesn’t want either. She’s stopped talking because her voice feels like glass, and everything is so  _loud_. HIVE’s voice intermixes with the Taylor’s and the Yates and the Morrison’s and the Greene’s and the other families and nuns and tell her that she does not deserve to even be alive right now. 

_“_ Why _would anyone want you? You’re nothing, Mary Sue, you hear me?_ _Nothing.”_

A belt buckle on her back did not hurt as much as those words and neither does the blade she drags across her thighs. Red blood seeps to the surface but she is too drained to even care. She just cleans up the blood and wraps herself back in her duvet, pretending the rotting smell of food in her room isn’t reminding her of all the nightmare Lincoln’s. 

Because she killed him, she deserves it.

* * *

They insert the feeding tube a week later, when she refuses to even touch food. She dropped fifteen pounds and she could die if she keeps it up. 

Good, she thinks, she won’t be able to hurt anyone else if she’s dead. 

She’s reading through some old Rising Tide encrypted chat room when she sees it. The first video the Watchdogs released of the Inhumans they captured. Rage fills her veins and it overtakes the grief like a hot coal, a fire burning deep within her soul. Those are  _ her  _ people they have captured, _her_ responsibility. More people are dying because of her and she can’t let it happen anymore. 

She spends two hours setting up a fake I.D, bank accounts, buying a van and packing her bag. She rips the feeding tube out of her nose and shoves as many vitamins and glucose tablets in her bag as she can find. She leaves her gauntlets, they’ll draw too much attention besides, the pressure on her bones feels good, the cracks and fractures and bruises are her way of paying the universe her dues. 

It’s half four in the morning when she leaves, the base is deadly silent. She leaves a note in her bunk for whoever goes in there to find her. She apologised for leaving, said she would be safe, told them to enjoy their lives, as time is precious and people can be ripped away in an instant. It sounds like a suicide note and if she gets taken out on this mission, maybe that won’t be such a bad thing. 

She hotwires a motorbike outside the Playground and tries not to concentrate on how much she wants to let the truck behind her on the interstate crush her aching body.

Her stomach clenches uncomfortably but she has more important things to do than eat. She has to save her people, she has to do some good, she has to protect her family from herself. 

Monsters like her don’t get happy endings. Killers like her don’t deserve the love in a home cooked meal and the caring eyes of her all too forgiving team. They will be safer without her. They have to be.


	5. Come Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Early season 4, when daisy has returned to SHIELD, before all the bad stuff happens. She still dealing with a lot but the team will always be there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone! Hope yall are well and life is treating you good. 
> 
> This chapter is a bit of a mess ngl, there’s a lot of daisy angst at herself, but we get PapaPhil being an absolute icon and saving her from herself. Also daisy uses the air vents to run away and hide in like Clint in nearly every fic but I’m obsessed with the air vent idea and I wanted daisy to do that lol. 
> 
> I think imma take out the Watchdog torture I talked about because I’m planning on doing the Framework next and talking about her torture in there so get ready for that. 
> 
> WARNINGS: anorexia, past child abuse, slight xenophobia(names that she’s called), bad brain stuff
> 
> Thanks for reading and enjoy! -bex xx

“Not hungry, Daisy?” 

It’s the first meal they’ve been able to have as a team since she’d been reinstated as a full agent. The levels thing still tripped her up and she hated that their schedules clashed almost as much as she hated that she’d been forced back into the organisation she’d tried so hard to protect by staying away. She didn’t hate having the team there or backup on missions that went FUBAR, but her head is still a complete mess of dark thoughts and she still knows she is a monster. 

She has other titles to go with that one too. _Quake, Terrorist, Inhuman Scum, Plague, Danger._ She knows she deserves those too, even though they sting like salt in her still gaping wounds. 

But their schedules have finally aligned and Mack had even made her mac and cheese because she’d taken one look at him when he asked what she wanted and he still knew their code. One blink for no, two for yes, three for “don’t make me choose”, four for “this is too much” and five for “I have to do this”. 

But she hadn’t exactly told them the whole truth about her time away, especially when it came to food and injuries and sleep. It wasn’t safe to sleep when you were being tailed and her nightmares kept her ridden in panic attacks for hours after, so she just got used to extra caffeine and crashing when her body needed it. Injuries were harder to hide, Jemma had insisted on a full body check and Daisy had resisted right back, threatening any medic that came near her with quakes. Jemma took one look at her arms and the look of pity and anger was there, and there was no way Daisy was letting her see the rest. She’d dealt with it, she was fine, end of discussion. 

The food thing, however, that was going to be far too difficult to hide. Disregarding the fact that the entire team knew about her anorexia, and that it caused her to stop eating at least once a month when she was in a good headspace, she knew she’d dropped far too much weight in her time away for them not to notice. 

Food became the impossible thing it was before SHIELD. She was in and out of her own sanctioned missions, infiltrating Watchdog bases and meet-ups and circles on a weekly basis, investigating and stopping crime rings she came across by accident every month or so, transporting Inhumans around the country to safe houses and trying to stay undetected from SHIELD and the rest of the governments looking for her, she never had a lot time to eat. 

And in some way, she thought that was a good thing. A voice boomed like thunder in her mind every time her stomach grumbled loudly and she even thought about eating, even something small like a protein bar or an apple or cereal. Her ledger wasn’t clean enough yet, blood still stained her hands reminding her she was a monster and monsters do not deserve food. Monsters like her deserve to stay locked in the basement or the closet for three days, they deserve holy water flung in their eyes because they’d been naughty, they deserved to go hungry because of the deaths that hung over her head like storm clouds. They deserved the scars, the bullets, the attacks, the empty stomachs, the days of no sleep. They deserved to pay for their sins and that was what she was doing.

“It’s fine, just not that hungry.” She says eventually but there’s already six sets out eyes on her and she’s already feeling trapped. This can’t happen, she can’t have them looking at her with pity and love.  _She does not deserve it and she must remember that._

“You didn’t have breakfast.” Jemma points out. She hadn’t had breakfast because she was trying to work out how many missions she could do in a week without people getting worried or suspicious that she was still trying to pay for her mistakes. They told her she’d been forgiven, her debts were paid and she was free, but she isn’t. Not when part of her salary goes to Amanda Campbell because her brother is dead and it’s her fault. Not when Inhumans are still being killed. Not ever, maybe. 

“Or lunch, Mace had you in that debrief and you said you’d eat later. You never did.” Coulson chimes in. 

“You didn’t eat yesterday either.” May throws in and it’s beginning to feel like an interrogation. 

“I’m just not hungry, okay?” Daisy snaps and immediately regrets when she sees their faces. 

“I have to go.” The weight of their stares is too much and she feels like she’s suffocating. Running is what she’s good at, when things get bad she needs to vacate the premises as soon as possible or she’ll explode and destroy the place and it’s all just too much right now. 

She hears them call after her but she isn’t listening. She hears feet coming after her but she’s already quaked herself up into the nearest air vent and is crawling away at breakneck speed where she knows they won’t follow. 

* * *

Coulson finds her three hours later, poking his head through the grate. 

“You’re worse than Barton.” He sighs and she gives him a non-committal shrug from where she is curled up in the vent. She hasn’t hidden in here for a while, it was her safe place when the SUVs were out. It was quiet, the enclosed space providing a shell for her overwhelming emotions. If she concentrated enough, she could feel the vibrations of the entire base from here, the convulsing air around her telling her that everyone was safe. 

“At least you haven’t started shooting arrows at the rookies when they piss you off.” He joked and she actually laughed at that one. 

“I’m sorry.” She apologised because that’s what she always does. She learned early in life that “sorry” made things a little better, even if you didn’t mean it. An apology was better than anger. Kids that apologised didn’t get sent back as much. 

“Why?” Coulson asks and she wished that he didn’t because how can she even begin to explain why she was sorry. 

“For everything. For leaving, for the prison, for HIVE, for destroying the base, for not being enough, for all the deaths, for-“ 

“ _Daisy,_ _ stop. _ ” Coulson snaps and she stops out of shock. He doesn’t take that tone with her often, only when he’s mad at her. The five year old Mary Sue in her trembles. That tone meant the closet or the orphanage or the belt. She knows logically that he would never hurt her but she flinches all the same. He notices because he always notices and the fire dies a little in his eyes. 

“ _ It is not your fault. _ ” 

It’s enough to break the dam gates and he extracts himself from the vent so she can jump down and into his arms. Her sobs are broken and sad, everything she’s been locking away for the past six months or years hitting her at the one time. Flashes pass her eyes, the darkness of the closet in the Taylor house, the school database she hacked to change her grades so Mr Olton wouldn’t belt her for the bad grade, the street she slept in for a week when she ran away. Faces of foster parents, foster siblings, nuns, SHIELD agents, people she couldn’t save pass on a loop, constantly changing like a film reel on fast forward. Watchdogs and HYDRA agents morph into one, HIVE and Ward are one and the same, Garrett and Gideon Malick mix until they are the same person beating her down. Every muscle in her body is screaming at her, the emptiness in her stomach growls and churns but the tears keep coming and she keeps letting them. 

Coulson whispers to her the whole time, soft assurances that she can’t really hear over the rushing of blood in her ears. 

Eventually, what is probably an hour or two later, she runs out of tears and the flashes have stopped. Coulson is still whispering and she can finally comprehend his words enough to hold a conversation. 

“I don’t think I’m okay, AC.” She croaks and she hasn’t called him that for so long that she can physically feel her heart break at the title. 

“No, but you will be. It might take months or years or decades, but one day, Daisy, I promise you will be okay.” She’s not quite sure she believes that but she nods anyway. 

“Come on, I’ll make you grilled cheese.” He says, pulling her to her feet and he must see the apprehension on her face because he pulls her in for another hug. 

“You can take the vents if you don’t want anyone to see you.” She’s glad he can read her so well. She’s not a coward, she just hates people seeing her cry. Tears in the foster system meant getting sent back and tears on the streets meant nothing, it’s ingrained in her to keep her emotions to herself. 

“I’ll meet you there.” 

“You better. I know it’s hard Daisychain, but you’re not alone anymore. And that means that I will pull off missions if you don’t eat.” The threat is real and it’s happened before, May pulled her off an infiltration op when she hadn’t eaten in two days. It’s blackmail, but it works. She needs missions like she needs air, the adrenaline like oxygen, the smell of gunfire on her body like water. It’s probably an addiction and definitely not healthy but it’s her world. The one constant in her life, she intends to keep it that way. 

“Thanks, AC.” She says as she pulls herself into the vent. She sits for a moment letting the world around her focus after her emotion-filled explosion. The vibrations flow through her body and if she tries hard enough she can pinpoint her team, their vibrations are the most familiar. Fitzsimmons in the lab, Mack and Elena in the common room, May in the armoury, Coulson in the kitchen. Knowing that they are there and they are safe, washes a calm over her like an ocean. 

She eventually travels back to the kitchen and drops through the vent, startling Fitz who must have been on a candy run. Coulson sighs and mumbles, _“if her and Barton and Romanov ever got together...”_ and she steals a pack of jelly beans from Fitz’s stash. She doesn’t eat it, of course, it’s going to take her over an hour to eat Coulson’s grilled cheese, she can’t exactly just throw down a pack of candy. She flings it to Mack who catches it appreciatively and hands her a controller whilst Coulson finishes her sandwich. 

The entire team has congregated back in the common room by the time she finishes, setting a new record at two and a half hours for a sandwich. They end up in a lengthy COD battle and she reclaims her first position, much to the annoyance of Mack and Fitz who had it claimed. 

She lies in bed that night and lets herself sleep for the first time in months. The nightmares come and wreak havoc on her psyche but in the morning she does tai chi with May and manages to swallow a bowl of cereal before going off on a run before her next mission. Mack hands her gauntlets and Coulson hands her a protein bar and that’s when she knows. 

She’s home.


	6. Not Real

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> S4 Framework Arc: Daisy’s been out of HYDRA cells for two weeks but it’s hitting her a lot harder than she’s letting on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey hall! Just your regular reminder to drink water and look after yourself:) 
> 
> So, basically I’ve decided that time moves a little differently in the Framework, a day is like a week in there, if that makes sense. So Daisy has been rescued out of the HYDRA cells but it’s been like two weeks and Simmons is very angry that she won’t tell her what happened. 
> 
> WARNINGS: anorexia, mention of torture
> 
> Enjoy:) -bex xx

“You’re gonna talk and you’re going to talk now.” Jemma demands, storming into the training room she’d been hiding in for the past hour and a half. 

She flinches at the sound of her voice, but increases her speed at the bag. It’s not like it matters, this isn’t even  _real_ , but the feeling of raw skin on hard leather still fills that emotional void she’s slipping into with something else, something red and angry, but it’s  _ something _ , so it works. 

“Subtle, Simmons.” She murmurs but of course Jemma hears her. The scientist sighs and stalks over to the bag, her face revealing just how angry she was. 

“What happened in there?” She asks when she’s closer and Daisy flinches at even the thought of what happened in HYDRA. She’s been trying to block it out mostly, trying to forget what happened in that lab or the cell. 

“I really don’t want to talk about it, Jem.” She whispers, letting her fingers lie flat on the punching bag, feeling the vibrations of the entire room from where the bag hangs from the ceiling. It’s not like the real world, the vibrations are off,  _artificial_. If anything she’s just glad she has her powers back, she feels like an empty shell without them, a piece of her puzzle missing. 

“I really don’t care.  _ Something  _ happened in there and it’s clearly affecting you. You barely eaten a thing since you got back, you’ve been training more than ever, you haven’t slept. It’s been two weeks since you got out of there,  _ what happened? _ ” There are tears in Jemma’s eyes and it fills Daisy with guilt. The Framework is their worst nightmare in more ways than being trapped in a virtual hellscape. Fitz is her soulmate and he is the worst version of himself in here, it must be killing her. 

But what happened might break her more. 

“It was just weird, okay Simmons? I’m fine, I’ve had worse.” She lies. She has had worse but it’s not the pain that’s keeping her awake at night. 

“Bullshit.” 

“Did you just swear? Did Jemma Simmons just utter a curse word?” Daisy desperately teases, Jemma’s getting too close. She’ll crack soon. She can’t tell her, Jemma can’t know what happened. 

“ _Bullshit_ , Daisy. You’re not  _ fine, nobody in this fucking place is fine.  _ But  you  haven’t been fine for a long time and I’m worried and you’re the only person who knows this place isn’t fucking real and I can’t lose you too! So tell what happened in there!” Jemma is screaming by this point, tears freely streaming down her face. 

Daisy immediately wraps her in a tight hug, wincing at the pull on her still broken bones and strained muscles she’ll probably never admit to. Terrigenesis can help heal a lot, but she was tortured for hours, (or maybe it was days, she can’t quite remember)and there was a lot of damage. 

“It’s okay, Jemma, it’s okay. We’re alive and we’re gonna get out of here.” She whispers into Jemma’s ear, stroking the smaller woman’s hair. She hums that stupid lullaby her mother sang to her as a child, one she can only half recall but tries anyway. She feels the tension in Simmons shoulders slowly decrease and they sink to the floor, still embraced in each other’s arms. 

“Please, Daisy. I have to know.” Jemma softly pleads and it’s so broken that Daisy’s resolve snaps and she prepares to break Jemma’s heart even further. 

“They tortured me. Beat the ever loving crap out of me, experimented on me, isolated me. I tried to get Fitz to understand, to get through to him but he....he just slapped me then cleaned the blood of his hands like I was dirt. AIDA offered me Lincoln in exchange for our location in the real world, that we could be happy here. I told her to go to hell basically then I quaked her out a window and shattered her spine. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Simmons.” Daisy states, cold and hard. No point in sugar coating, it’s going to just get both of them hurt in the long run. 

“Why on earth didn’t you tell us?” Jemma whispers, incredulously. Her face has paled slightly and Daisy can practically feel her eyes roaming her body for injuries. 

“Because it doesn’t matter. It’s not real.” She says simply, though she knows that not quite the truth. She knows that the broken bones and bruises might not be real, that Doctor Fitz is not their Fitz, but it doesn’t stop it hurting any less. It doesn’t stop the nightmares that have only increased since getting here. It doesn’t stop the recoil her body creates when she goes near food for god knows what reason this time. It doesn’t stop her heart splintering into thousands of fragments when she realised that they’re not getting out of here unscathed. 

“Of course it matters Daisy! You were tortured!” Jemma exclaims. 

“I told you I’m fine.” Daisy shrugs, the pain of her cracked ribs that haven’t quite healed yet spiking but she muffles it. She’s dealt with bullet wounds and splintered arms, she can deal with a freaking cracked rib. 

“Stop saying that! You always say that, you’re allowed to be hurt Daisy.” 

“No. I can’t Jemma, I can’t break, not here.” Daisy says hastily. She can’t, they’ll never get out if she has a complete breakdown now. 

“Will you at least let me see what they did?” Jemma will always fall back on science when the emotions are too much of a minefield to deal with, which is oddly comforting in its own morbid way. 

“It’s just some cracked ribs, maybe a fracture or two. I’m good, Simmons, no need to poke me with anything.” It’s a half truth, she is fine but that’s not the reason she won’t let Jemma see. If she did, she’d have to show her what they  really  did. The tests, the experiments, they extracted and took and tested and used her in ways she hasn’t been since HIVE and it makes her skin crawl and her throat close. 

“Will you at least come eat something?” Jemma pleads and she can’t really say no anymore. 

“Fine, but please just let me have one of my safe foods. Everything tastes...off.” She’s once again glad that Jemma knows about her issues with food, even in this nightmare world. 

“Fine, but you’re eating then going to bed.” There’s no compromise to be made with Jemma’s tone so she wordlessly accepts the bargain and pulls them both to their feet trying to ignore the pain that shoots through her body. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.” She whispers on the way out. 

“I’m sorry it happened.” Jemma whispers back, squeezing her hand. 

“Yeah, me too.” 


	7. I’ll Be Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post season 7 and how Daniel has learned to deal with their issues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, there’s a change in narrative because I got so much writers block and I just wanted this story to be done because I’ve got other stuff in the works lol. 
> 
> I was seriously considering just making Dousy friends like Clint and Nat but I love their relationship, but this chapter can still be taken platonically? Idk you can decide. 
> 
> WARNINGS: anorexia, slight breakdowns
> 
> I hope you have enjoyed this story! Thanks for reading and lemme know what you thought! -bex xx

Daniel’s not an idiot, he knows there is things they don’t talk about. 

Like when little Alya asked about the scar on Daisy’s neck and she froze, handing the confused child to her father and bolting out through the air vents. She disappeared for an entire week and came back with haunted eyes, two bullet wounds, three broken bones and a report from Mack that said she took down two human trafficking rings, singlehandedly. 

They don’t talk about the nights she spent curled over the toilet, puking up whatever tiny amounts of food she had managed to eat when she got bad again, because it turns out that dying does not agree with the stomach, especially a stomach that belonged to an anorexic. 

And _everyone_ agreed not to talk about Yturi. Space pirates and Daisy on a bad mental day were not a good combination. He’s pretty sure even Danvers would have nightmares about her screams when she quaked the pirate captain to dust. 

So yeah, there was a whole host of things they didn’t talk about. Daisy has her own list of things  _ he  _ doesn’t talk about either, a whole page of triggers and techniques to help him after war flashbacks or when everything just got a bit too much. 

But Daisy...he’s pretty sure he could write a book. 

That’s not to say that their lives were doom and gloom all the time, on the contrary. They’d been in space for just over ten months, their relationship was stronger than ever and the general morale of the Zephyr 3 team was always on the high. 

But they both had very eventful lives and when everything slowed down, it’s when it hit them the most. A psych class would probably have a field day with them. It wasn’t a very comforting thought. 

But currently, he was just trying to get Daisy back into a normal eating routine. She’d fallen back into the old routine after Yturi and now that she’d snapped out of the “constant nightmares/vomiting/beating up a punching bag at four in the morning” phase, she was ready to go back to their scheduled meals. 

It was a challenge at first when she told him about her anorexia. It was never really discussed back in his day, the war ingrained the importance of food into them, but now that he thought about it, it was probably really common. Daisy had finally cracked and told him, (after a three day mission to destroy some human experiment group, it took them a week to get the bloodstains off the carpet) and he’d just took it in his stride. He still couldn’t explain it, the way they just clicked, he just knew he’d go to the ends of the earth of her. He knew that he’d be there when she fell, he’d dust her off and they’d try to find some sort of normality again. 

“How much?” Daisy groaned at the sight of the oatmeal. She hated oatmeal and he knew it, but she had to make up the calories and he wasn’t letting her just eat cereal. 

“At least half.” He answered automatically. This was old practice at this point, a routine developed over the past year. It was hard and trying and he felt awful every time he had to force her into eating, but he knew it was worth it. She was worth it. 

“Fine. Where are we headed today?” She preferred to talk at the table to take her mind off the food. She said that it helped settle the angry voice in her head, that noise didn’t make it as loud. His heart ached a bit when she told him that. 

“Fury wants us to go to Callahan. Said there was some trouble brewing up that way.” He replied, pulling out the notes he made yesterday during the call. Daisy normally took the calls but she’d been sparring with the agents on the Zephyr and the call was an emergency. 

“Thanos?” She questioned and the slight tremor in the spoon told him she was a lot more worried about the rumoured eco-terrorist than she let on. He grabbed her hand and held a thumb over her pulse point, other hand tracing light lines on the scar from the glass she shoved in her hand. Her hands stopped shaking and he nodded. 

“We’ll work it out. We always do.” He told her and she relaxed a little. 

“You saw what he did on Obtinion.” She reminded him. That place had been a disaster, nearly the entire planet had been wiped out because Thanos had ordered “balance”. Daniel thought his idea of balance looked a lot like brutal murder. 

“Maybe we can stop it this time. Eat your oatmeal.” He gently prodded, and she sighed but she picked up the spoon again. 

“Hey, Daniel?” She asked. 

“Yeah?” 

“Thank you.” She said sincerely, her eyes betraying how much she actually meant those two little words. 

“What for?” 

“Just...everything. Being here, being you. Forcing me to eat this stupid oatmeal.” She laughed but he knew she was just trying to deflect the seriousness out of what she as saying. 

“I told you I would always be there to pick you up when you ran into walls. I love you, Daisy, I just want you to be okay.” She nuzzles her head into his shoulder and he cradles the back of her head, still wondering how he got so lucky. 

“Can I have toast?” She mumbled. 

“If you eat it with jam then yes. What about your oatmeal?” He reasons, although he knows she really does  _ hate  _ oatmeal. 

“Kora will eat it, she loves the stuff. Raspberry jam, please.” She stands and takes the offending bowl through to the cockpit. 

“Anything for you, Quake.” He calls at her back and he is rewarded with the glass of water spilled in his lap. 

“Careful, Danny boy, accidents happen.” She teases, hair swinging as she turns into the cockpit. 

Yeah, they were gonna be okay.


End file.
